Ok… still trying to figure out these new feed and stream features. (I can hear Dr. Egon Spengler’s warning “Don’t cross the streams.”) If I did this correctly, this post will…
Fingers crossed…..
UPDATE: Interesting as I did not realize this would post to my blog. I thought this was just the social feed…..
I am just testing the Fediverse/Mastodon connection via WordPress Reader. This could be a lot of fun. I really like the idea of being able to go over character counts and everything just linking back to the blog. I am going to have to think this through as I don’t know when/where to publish the social stuff anymore. It’s all connected and centralized, but somehow I now have 4 accounts because everyone keeps adding the features! I have to admit, this is all pretty fun!
Happy Little Free Library Week! This annual observance has been running since 2013, when the LFL folks wanted to recognize all the folks voluntarily setting up Little Free Libraries. This year’s dates run May 17–23, 2026.
I love walking around our neighborhood and seeing all the LFLs in people’s yards. We have some creative folks around Birmingham. If you want to find the closest one to you, here is a handy map for locating all the bookish spots near you.There are more than 3,500 nationwide.
While initially set up to fight “book deserts”, some Little Free Libraries have come to represent many social causes and meet community needs. We are lucky to have a Todd H. Bol winner near here, in Birmingham, with the Berthiaume family’s Antiracist Little Free Library to increase understanding and raise racial-violence awareness.
There are lots of ways to get involved with Little Free Library Week this year. First of all, do you have any books around the home that you would not miss? This is a GREAT time to head out and help stock some book-sharing boxes in your area.
Next up, the LFL crew wants people to use #LFLweek on Instagram (though I would also encourage everyone to check out Mastodon as well) as well as enter their Photo Contest (do read all the rules), and they have a BINGO game running as well this week.
It’s always a good time when books and community collide. Hope you find a way to celebrate reading and books with your neighbors.
I finished this Megan Garber’s Screen People last night and wanted to type up a quick review.
If you know the names Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman then you can probably skip this one. If you don’t recognize those names then the first couple of chapters of Garber’s “Screen People” will feel like fresh air to you (and then skip to the last few).
The chapters of the book are named after parts of a tv show or movie and the metaphor doesn’t really carry through, the middle, very well. While I 100% agree with what the book asserts (tech issues, Trump, toxicity, media diets, etc.) it just lacked some clarity and AN INDEX, PLEASE! That was my biggest gripe – for all this effort and event citations and science paper quoting – we needed an index and bibliography. I did lots of underlining and I’m already on board with where Garber is writing from. I just want to be able to look up these bills, hearings, books, news events, and science papers to do more digging.
All the usual suspected are here with the politics, miopic tech leaders, QANON, etc. and Garber does a good job early on showing how our current networks and technology enable and help all those bad actors.
Screen People mentions lots of bad things right alongside the word “platforms”, but never connects the dots & doesn’t offer much in the way of solutions either. I am bumping it up to a 3/5 because I absolutely agree with the subtitle How We Entertained Ourselves into a State of Emergency. That is indeed spot on.
